Microsoft Word: Teaching an Old Dog New tricks

The spell-check feature in Microsoft Word is your first line of defense against embarrassing misspellings and grammatical errors, but it has a few chinks in its armor. Obviously, Microsoft Word cannot remember every single word in the English language, especially those specific to an industry. Luckily for you and me, you can add new words to Microsoft Word’s dictionary so that it will no longer mark them wrong. When Word gives the dreaded red underline to a word that you are sure is correct, right-click the word and click the Add to Dictionary button. The next time you type the word, your computer will remember it and no longer recognize it as incorrect.

In addition to adding words to the dictionary, you can also set Microsoft word to automatically correct your commonly misspelled words. To do this, first click the office button in the top left-hand corner of your screen, then, click on word options at the bottom. This will pull up a new window, click on the Proofing tab of this window. Now click Autocorrect Options at the top of this window. In the Replace box, type the word as you would normally misspell it. In the With box, type the word correctly. When you are finished, click the Add button. You can also remove the autocorrect features that you don’t want.